(Click to view super-sized.)
Full-page ad scanned in from the Friday, April 6th, 1979 edition of the Miami Herald.
Think about it: a full-page ad for a movie that's been in the theater for 17 weeks? Amazing, and something you may never see again. That movie was HUGE.
Think about it: a full-page ad for a movie that's been in the theater for 17 weeks? Amazing, and something you may never see again. That movie was HUGE.
The major sci-fi feature film releases were all major events back then. Now, thanks to the internet and websites like AICN, or TrekMovie for that matter, leaking everything months in advance, there are no surprises left...and nowhere near the genuine excitement of a "film event" old-school style.
ReplyDeleteI remember getting into an advance screening of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, about 10 days ahead of release, when all the general public knew of the film was the fuzzy bright lights and big music in the early trailers. So it was a total surprise and shock to all of us in the theatre (it was a charity screening full of celebrities and bigwigs). And though I no longer love CE3K like I once did, the *event* of going in to that exclusive screening with virtually no foreknowledge made it one of the major movie events of my life. Never again...
CMX,
ReplyDeleteYou are soooo right, used to be when I went into a movie, all I knew was the basic outline from what I had read about it in Starlog or some such magazine. The plot and details were a surprise, and we enjoyed it more!
But I have little discipline in resisting available spoilers as they trickle out online now, and as a result I go in knowing 80% or more of the movie's story. And often I wish I didn't... but what do you do? NOT read them online? HA! Fat chance, for me... I'm a victim of my own curiosity, and the sites all too willing to entice me with spoilers.
I LOVE this image... it was the iconic image to me for the Superman movie for years and years... and I wish I could find a color version of it. (there are cropped images of it that were "colorized"... but I never found an original.
ReplyDelete...and I STILL love CE3K...
Daren,
ReplyDeleteI know what you mean about that poster! I wish I had a color version also... I guess that was done just for the newspaper ads and not released as a poster. The closest I could come to it was this image:
http://www.capedwonder.com/images/picture-folder/images/wallpaper/shirt-rip2.jpg
I suppose that's the one you are referring to.
That CE3K preview screening was trippy, as I had recently come back home from film school, turned 22, and was already working on my 25th film. Still, as I've grown older and more responsibile, my main issue with CE3K is the stupidity of Dreyfuss throwing rocks and dirt through the kitchen window, the awful mashed potato and family fighting/screaming scenes, and his abandoning the family to chase a phantom. Not a good message or example. Even Spielberg has said he'd never make a film like that again, having his own family and kids today.
ReplyDeleteSince new films rarely interest me, current spoilers mean little. My wife and I agreed weeks ago, for example, to skip the new ST film. She remarked, "Shatner's not playing Kirk? That's NOT Star Trek!" So be it.